


Sharing Smiles With Strangers (Lead To Newfound Dangers)

by HideFromMeDarling



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Orphanage, Angst, Complete, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Orphan Derek, Orphan Stiles, Short, What Have I Done, why do i write such tragic shit?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 10:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1978980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HideFromMeDarling/pseuds/HideFromMeDarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the only word that held any meaning to Derek anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sharing Smiles With Strangers (Lead To Newfound Dangers)

The first time he arrives, it's February and the bell on the door is broken. So he knocks. Or rather, the woman who has his arm in a viselike grip, does.   

 

Derek watches him. Of all the other children there, he is the only one who does. The others' eyes trace every movement the woman makes, ears straining to hear her bored, nonchalant words. Derek knows the woman, knows why everyone is watching. She is the one who brings you here, every time. And she is the one who takes you away, to someplace warm. But only sometimes. To most, she represents both hopelessness and hope, tragedy and a new beginning. Derek doesn't watch her. His attention is on the boy by her side. 

He has an expressionless face full of potential, and Derek is sure he could smile in a thousand different ways if he only had the reason. But for now, his features are unmoving in a familiarly numb way. Derek knows that look. Knows why he is here. Is sad for him. For the both of them.

Derek smiles sympathetically at him. He smiles sadly back.

Mrs. Margret opens up the boy's dreaded new life for him, takes him in and closes the door.

Derek turns away and doesn't look again.

 

  ~

 

The boy is there when Derek follows the inpatient wave of Mrs. Margret's hand back inside. He is sitting at the middle of the table, gnawing away at a piece of old bread. Everything is old at Derek's home. Everything but the boys who are unfortunate enough to be put to live there.  

 

~

 

Derek learns his name and his nature on the third day.

Stiles is determined. Stiles is loud. Stiles is intelligent.  

Stiles is grieving.

Just like Derek was. But that was a long time ago. He has come to accept things as they are. It's easier that way. Not quite as painful.

 

 ~

 

Some of the children at Mrs. Margret's Home for Boys are luckier than others. They don't remember their families. They cannot miss them. On the other hand, one could argue that they never had even that. I will leave it up to you to decide which ones are the luckier. Even though none of them are, essentially, lucky in any sense of the word.

Some also adapt faster than others. With this particular matter at hand,  it is quite obvious which are the lucky ones. Derek is not one of them. Stiles isn't either. But they help each other out.

They share smiles when Mrs. Margret looks furiously for her hairpin, her cheap watch, her brand new pen. (They are all hidden under Stiles' bed, wrapped up in a dirty shirt full of holes and shoved away from prying eyes.)

They share food when Mrs. Margret catches one of them and doesn't allow him supper.

They share pained grimaces when she feels the denial of food is not enough of a dire punishment.

And they share stories, endless amounts of little memories and imagined endings, dreams and nightmares, one after another. They write them down in a notebook, old as all else, the best they can. They draw each other there, in that wonderful way only children can, the very core of all that is important about that person perfectly portrayed. And they write their names and their declarations of friendship that will last forever on those yellow little pages.

 

~

 

Derek is thirteen and Stiles is eleven when Miss Hope and a New Beginning takes Stiles with her, along with Derek's hope and his new beginning.

Derek cries for the first time in seven years and eighty-nine days.

Stiles cries for the first time in two years and twenty-four days.

The woman doesn't cry. Neither does anybody else but them. The notebook stays untouched under Derek's mattress.

 

 ~

 

The second time he arrives, Derek is there. They don't hug. They don't cry either. They only watch each other. And Derek sees him.

All of it, it is identical to what Derek has seen on his face before. The tentative smile, the eyes that are not shy by nature, but by consequence, the childlike wonder in both. And he doesn't understand how, after all that has happened, Stiles can still have all that innocence and curiosity practically spilling over his over eager spirit.

Derek thinks maybe that is why he loves Stiles.

They dig out the notebook and write down little messages of the most genuine kind. They have missed each other.

 

Derek is still thirteen and Stiles is just barely twelve when Miss Hopelessness and Tragedy brings back Derek's laughter and his wonder.

 

~

 

Stiles is bad-mannered. 

Maybe that's why the Martin family sent him back that day almost a year ago. On the second best day of Derek's life at Mrs. Margret's Home for Boys.

This is his best.

Derek is fifteen now. Stiles is almost fourteen. Stiles wants to celebrate. They wait for the sun to set the sky on fire, orange and red flickering at the horizon before slowly dying out, and then they go. 

They jump over the fence as quietly as they can and they run.

They laugh and they pant and they scream in joy. 

It's freedom.

A little bit of freedom for a few hours on a cool October night, on the day Stiles turns fourteen. 

They climb in the trees. They roll down the hills and lay down in grass. Stiles says he can count all the stars. 

He can't. Derek knows that but lets him try it anyway. They watch the sky and the birds they startled to flight from the trees. They watch each other. Derek smiles. Stiles smiles back. 

Stiles kisses him. 

Just an innocent, short peck on the lips. Exactly what a first kiss is supposed to feel like. 

Derek smiles again and wishes Stiles a happy birthday. 

Stiles says it's the happiest one in a while.

 

~ 

 

The third time he arrives, he hasn't been gone for long. Derek has counted the days. There were exactly ten of them. 

Stiles comes back from the hospital and they say he is healthy. 

They are wrong.

 

~ 

 

For a while, things are good. Stiles seems better. Derek's heart feels lighter. He can laugh again and he can kiss Stiles on the cheek, the forehead, the lips. Stiles does the same. All while hiding from Mrs. Margret and the other boys. Margret has once already told them it was wrong to kiss another boy, to love another boy. She had beaten it into their backs with the sharp sting of a slim stick. But Stiles is determined. Derek has known that from the start.

And Derek can't shake away his love for Stiles.

He doesn't want to. It's the single most right thing in his life and even the fact that it is the only one doesn't make the statement any less powerful. 

Because Derek loves Stiles.

And Stiles loves Derek. 

 

Until.

 

~ 

 

It comes again.

The fear. The silence. The sickness in Stiles' whiskey brown, searching eyes. They don't find what they are looking for. Derek isn't allowed to be there. 

But he remembers the last he saw of Stiles before they took him again.

He was sick. So, so sick. And Derek cried for him.

He smoothed his messy hair and he whispered to him his final words. His last stories.  And Stiles wanted to do the same.

All he could manage was one word. One last smile.

 

"Derek". 

 

~ 

 

The third time he leaves, he doesn't come back. And Derek is left to wonder why it is that he is robbed of everything again. Stripped from his skin, down to his bones. To the rawest bit of him that still misses his mother and his sisters and his brother. And now Stiles. More than anything, he misses Stiles. And as he wonders why, he draws a conclusion so terrible he is left shaking in his clothes, the only thing keeping him sheltered from the world.

It's his fault. 

Mrs. Margret was right. 

And now Stiles is robbed of his breath and Derek is robbed of his touch. 

 

~ 

 

The second time Derek runs away at night, he's alone. And he doesn't come back. He has nothing to come back to. Nothing to run toward. So he stays still. And unlike Stiles, he chooses to do so.

The notebook lays alone, cold, forgotten on Derek's old bed. Its words are of no meaning to anyone, anymore. And it ends its story like Derek ended his. With a single word, the most hopeful word Derek could think of at the moment. The only one that still had something to give to him. 

 

 

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever fan work, so any and all feedback is extremely appreciated :)


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